thecapitol | I Want Your Flowers Like Babies Want God's Love [Closed]

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I Want Your Flowers Like Babies Want God's Love [Closed]

WHO| Enjolras and Venus
WHAT| The ship finally sails.
WHEN| End of week 6, a few days after Venus dies.
WHERE| District Five Suite
WARNINGS| Shippy shit. You've been warned.

As with all Tributes upon their return, Venus isn't conscious when she's returned to her Capitol bed, isn't conscious when she's revived from death. She's brought back into her roof, dressed in soft pajamas, having already been prepped slightly by Stylists in the interim. Her hair's in soft, big curls, her fingernails done. There isn't a scratch on her, and she's entirely unrecognizable from the bloody mass of entrails and bone smeared across the floor in the Arena, in footage that's still being played at least once an hour.

She sleeps for a while. She dreams, and that's the first she knows she isn't dead. In her dreams someone is playing Operation on her body, and they're replacing each of her internal organs one by one, but it doesn't hurt, and she isn't scared. You're going to be a whole new person, they say.

And for the first time in a long time, she isn't sad that she wakes up this morning. She's sad when she wakes up, because she knows Kankri and Courfeyrac are still back there in the Arena, now thoroughly traumatized by her badly thought-out decision to spend the moment of her death with them (in retrospect, she should have gone out with dignity in the fall to her demise). But she isn't sad to be alive.

It's a strange feeling. She gets up and wrinkles her toes over the carpet in her room, looking at the rosy pink paint on them, and runs a hand over the bridge of her nose where Kevin cut her up. She takes a moment to cry, but she isn't sure why, and she can't put words to the strange sadness that settles into the folds of her brain, or to how fast she forgets it's there.

And then she feels her pendant from District Five around her neck, and opens the door to her room and into the District Five hallway.

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"I'll be fine," he assures her, only vaguely troubled by her concern. It, coupled with her words makes him consider the image he's presented to her. The idea of the brooding, Enlightenment-obsessed scholar ill-equipped to handle the violence of the Arena isn't inaccurate, he supposes, but it's also not the whole picture.

Thus, it's with the reservation that comes with the realization of prolonged, unintentional dishonestly that he reaches for her hand.

"I have given you the impression that I am far more delicate than I am." His eyes burn into hers trying to convey simultaneously an apology and an explanation. How best should he explain the ethical consideration behind his inaction? How much did the intention even matter? He had, after all, made himself a burden to her in many ways.

"My decision not to fight should be taken as an inability to do so. I may not be anywhere near as skilled as you are, but I--" He pauses, eyes big and almost pleading. "I do not want you thinking you have to protect me. I do not wish to be unfair to you."

"I don't care if you're delicate or not. I come from being part of a team. We look after our own." It's stubborn, a refusal to yield and step aside, but an explanation as much as his, a way to state that her protectiveness is as much about her as it is about her perception of him. At the same time, it sidesteps the question of whether or not she believes him hapless, which, to her, is not something she has a simple and unmeasured answer to.

She takes his hand in hers, as has become commonplace between the two of them, what she recognizes as the first signs of this strange new pallor their relationship has taken, the humidity that fills the air before rain or thunder.

(And how ironic that now he wishes not to be unfair to her. They've built a year, nearly, of history on mutual unfairness.)

She would lead them out of the bathroom, except that the alternatives either put them back in Azula's path or bear that weird intimacy of inviting themselves into one of their rooms, and she recalls the awkwardness around doorways, like a pillar in space of uncertainty that you walk into. So she stays there, tip of her tongue feeling out the edges of the cut on her mouth.

The uncertainty settles over him as well. It's not the anxious uneasiness of a mutual half-trust, but rather it's the effervescent feeling of wanting something to progress without the risk of ruining it. The silence is a clear indication to him that something, anything, should be happening, that he should step in to fill the void, but the same pitfalls visible to her seem glaringly obvious to him.

So, as words are so often their greatest enemy, he neglects them for a moment to duck his head, invading her personal space to kiss lightly at the side of her mouth not marred by Azula's attack.

"My room is messy." It's hesitant for a statement of fact. The truth is that Enjolras has no idea what he's doing and the potential for misinterpretation is very real. He wouldn't rush Venus into anything that made her uncomfortable and nor was he attempting to. It was simply a matter of pragmatism. "There is an armchair and you can sleep in my bed, if you are still tired. I was reading. I will read."

In retrospect, he supposed, there were more fumbling invitations. Not many, but they had to exist.

She could correct him, tell him that she has her own bed that's perfectly comfortable, in a room that's less messy than just artfully disorganized, but she finds that both the proper words and the proper intent for such an action fail her. It's as if he stole them with that chaste little kiss.

"You can tell me what you're reading, and I'm sure that'll knock me right out." She winks and draws him out, then lets him take the lead as if she has no idea where his room is (which is an absolutely transparent falsity). "I actually missed the philosophy books when I was in the Arena. The museum pamphlets stopped being stimulating after like, two weeks."

And she held that piece of paper with the Camus quote in her hand until the sweat from her palm pulled all the ink out of the fibers.

She admires rather than just looks over his room. She's seen it before from the outside, but never been inside it before. It's not the palatial space compared to hers, given that it's the Victor's room. It's the details. Some rooms bear only traces of their inhabitant's personality, and some are imbued with the second life of having been lived in. The books and rumpled sheets and papers covered in handwriting speak to the latter.

"I gave up on Kant, thanks largely to you." For his first six months in Panem, his room had been comparatively uninteresting. It had held the beginnings of his book collection, and a small notebook filled with thoughts and observations and what they all meant together, but it was nothing in comparison to what they'd given him after his illustrious victory. Moreover, while everything else that had come along with the title of Victor seemed like a curse, the added personal space had been quite the opposite in his stubborn attempt to avoid the eye of the Capitol.

As such, it had quickly bent itself into something that suited him. The bed was rarely made when not by an Avox (most of whom he at least attempted to keep from waiting on him), and spread across it was a large chart with names in small but looping handwriting. In the corners of the room were a bookshelf and desk and on the opposite side, an antique-looking armchair. A coat rested over its side.

Reluctantly, he lets go over her hand to clean up the mess on the bed. Instead of really putting it away, the chart finds itself simply transplanted to the desk where it nests itself on top of some other work. In Paris, Enjolras had hated to have multiple projects going simultaneously, owing to the lack of space. Here, with the self-imposed hours of seclusion, it helps him think.

"Do you need another pillow?" There are three already, but he's seen the images of luxury the Capitol propagates and perhaps it isn't luxury but simply modern sensibilities. He doesn't consider his room to be particularly Spartan, but it would hardly be the first time their standards have diverged. "There is one in the closet, or I could ask an Avox."

"Am I that good an argument against, what was it, ethical duty?" Yes, Venus had worked through the Kant that he gave her. No, she did not enjoy it. It had become by the end a testament to her mulish personality than to her affinity for either argument or reading.

"This many pillows is just fine." She pokes her head over to look at the chart, but can't make sense of his handwriting immediately. The chart's put away and she collapses onto the bed, grace giving way to ease and leisureliness. She tucks her knees up and blows a curl away from her mouth.

Taking a pillow in her arms and knees like a koala hugging a branch, she settles on her side, watching him. She gestures with a finger. "You should turn the armchair, so I can see you while you read."

She doesn't know if she'll actually sleep. She's happy here, in his company, happy to lay here and exist in each others' presence for a little bit. She's sure that it'll be quite boring to whoever's watching the security cameras in this room, but for now she isn't all that concerned with how things look. She relaxes.

"In a sense," the reply comes with effort. It's purposefully passive and considered as he obligingly moves the chair from the window closer to the bed. There's less light this way, but realistically speaking, he probably won't be reading for very long anyway.

"I can understand the appeal of the absolute and ascribing a moral supremacy to a sort of self-denial." It was, after all, more or less how he'd handled himself for the past several years. Somehow Kant seemed entirely in line with the revolutionaries he'd admired. Oddly enough, while violence in the name of the absolute had been exceedingly attractive to him in Paris, it was violence in the name of the subjective that seems more relevant and alluring here. Somehow it's still difficult to explain that his reexamination of those opinions had come while watching her carefully murder people in the Arenas. Enjolras is aware of his in sensitivities at times, but even to him, that level of bluntness is pushing it.

"I suppose the Aristotelian in me usually gets the best of the debate. One must assume responsibility for his actions, even if they happen under duress, but there is the potential for a wrong action to be right in a very particular set of circumstances." Killing, after all, could be right if it helped further liberty for the masses. Likewise, lying could be necessary in the face of grave danger. Moreover, and more specifically to Venus, killing done quickly an efficiently was preferable and less cruel than left the the hands of someone who would drag it out for their own pleasure.

"And besides which," he offers her a small, slightly teasing smile. "Kant seems to believe that to be moral we must be perpetually unhappy. I would like to think that both ends are possible."

She sits up slightly, resting the side of her head on her fist. It's the sort of conversation that requires her to focus, to cling onto the words that her lack of education and his faint accent threaten to tug from her, but she doesn't find the practice tiresome. It's nice, to be treated as both student and equal.

She thinks he's trying to explain that he's forgiven her, which, she realizes, came only slightly before she was going to apologize for killing him in the first place anyway.

"Are you happy?" She teases back, with a light smile that shifts to somberness rather quickly. "Do you think we can be happy?"

In a situation like this, is there happiness or just distraction from pain? She finds herself wanting to believe that a moment like this - one of comfort and that sort of bubbly giddiness she can't explain - could be spread out. Like she could use this feeling to butter her life and his and the lives of others.

Edited (the butter returns) 2014-03-14 22:40 (UTC)

A part of him wants to tell her that that's enough. She's clearly tired and they can talk whenever she's had enough time to sleep. But that part of him is ultimately smaller than the part that's missed their conversations over almost anything else. While she might not have the education or vocabulary to recognize the patterns in her thought most of the time, Venus made keen observations and challenged his opinions, which in turn led Enjolras to further refine them. Their talks are a useful exercise and he enjoys it in much the same way he'd enjoyed conversing with Combeferre or Feuilly. There's a different sort of excitement, perhaps, and now that he's willing to admit to it, it seems evident that his enjoyment isn't derived solely from the philosophical chase, but it's there all the same.

"That depends, I suppose." He considered, setting aside the book for the moment." Happiness in this sense is not a fleeing sort of emotion. It is a poor translation from the Greek Eudaimonia, poorer still if you knew the French. In English, it takes the form of a thing which can be found or achieved. Happiness. Is it possible that anyone here can find Happiness?"

He leans forward in his seat, face alight with the rush of the conversation. "In the Greek, it is a verb and means something more like to flourish, like you might say of a plant. I do not think it is possible for anyone to truly flourish here, no. Not right now."

For the sobriety of the sentiment, however, there's still a very slight rebellious light in his otherwise hard blue eyes. If living though an Arena as a mentor had been hard, it had not been fruitless. In his assessment, at least, Enjolras has discovered a number of important truths they can use to move forward. "Perhaps the French is useful in that it translates into a sort of willful happiness. Happiness in that case is a conscious choice. I think I rather like that one because it perhaps implies an element of free will and that, as you know, is a rather attractive concept to me. You see, Venus, I do not think one can flourish without being free to make the choice to do so. Which, broken down further, would mean that I do not think we can flourish until we are free. But I think that the idea of happiness as an attainable thing is important. We strive for happiness and so together with it, we strive for freedom. It is intrinsic to us, on some level. And so even though they are recording all of this now, and even though they may someday grow fed up with what I say and cut my tongue out, they cannot rid themselves of the concept of happiness. And more than that, they need to keep their people under the impression of it. It is a perilous line they walk."

Edited 2014-03-14 23:30 (UTC)

Something in his digression about the Greek doesn't sit well with her, and it takes her until a few beats after he's done pondering on the Capitol to find a way to fully articulate it.

"I think we can flourish here. I think I've seen flourishing." She reaches over and rubs at the injury on her mouth as she fishes for the right words. "I think the way you're talking, either you've got total freedom or you've got none at all, and that's not right. It's got to be a sort of spectrum. You're talking political freedom and freedom to do what we want with our lives, but we have more freedom still, don't we? Not just like, leisure time, but..."

Absolute freedom would include freedom from their bodies, freedom from social quandary, maybe. Venus imagines freedom and she imagines isolation, and suddenly the prospect becomes much less inviting than it once was.

"We have free will, how to respond and how we think, how we play the game and, you know. How we treat others and ourselves. So we're not absolutely chained, we're just kind of..." She puts her hand up in a shrug. "Half-shackled, maybe. So we half-bloom. It's sort of like...if you see a tree that's growing through concrete, do you say it's flourishing in spite of the concrete or that it's a shame it's not growing in soil?"

She yawns and rests her head back down on the pillow. After a moment, she fishes around behind her and finds the blanket to pull around her shoulders. "I don't know if that makes any sense. It probably doesn't."

"Well, I believe that you have hit on the classic corporeal/incorporeal dichotomy and the problems that accompany it." There's an enthusiasm to his tone, a passion for the debate which seems ill-suited to the low lights of the room, and her half sleeping position. Still, he can't help the passion for the subject that possesses him. Metaphysics are less his interest that the ethics of political philosophy, but they have happened on a subject that seems to marry the two. And, indeed, he has missed their talks.

"My attack on that argument, were I to make one, would be two-pronged. In the first place, I have yet to decide whether or not free will is truly a factor here as we are not truly autonomous entities. Secondly, and I suppose that this is not an argument exactly, but you are entirely correct. As Rousseau so eloquently put it, Man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains. The moment we gain a consciousness, we know that there are rules and limits to our existence, and not just those of nature. I am, in as sense, merely assigning an arbitrary designation of free and unfree, and hoping for everything to fit within that paradigm. " He pauses to breathe, and abruptly something in the thought catches him. Enjolras sinks back into his seat, apparently deep in thought.

It is interesting, he thinks, how she can inspire this within him. And truly, it isn't just about Venus, but rather it's a play between them, a mutual exchange of ideas and thoughts. And suddenly with that thought, the thing that made him pause seems entirely clear. He leans forward again, not quite rounding on her with mock-accusation. "And you, my dear, are accusing me of clinging to a new absolute even while I attempt to entertain the subjective."

Edited (spelling is hard okay) 2014-03-16 04:14 (UTC)

Ironic, that he should bring up corporeality with a girl whose body is, in all likelihood, not really her own. For a moment, Venus runs her hand through her hair, fingernails, digging at her scalp just to feel it, as she processes what he says. He's going a little too fast for her, but she's gamely trying to keep up, spurred forward by the enthusiasm in his voice, the barely-smothered smile at the corner of his lips. He looks younger when he talks like this, more alive than he's seemed in so many ways elsewhere.

"Caught me. I am the Inquisition." She smiles back and raises a hand slightly, calling for a moment to breathe through her thoughts. "But, okay, you're calling for subjective happiness but saying you need a certain threshold of freedom for that to exist, right? I guess I'm asking why you set the threshold where you did, because that sounds absolute."

She pats at the bed next to her. "You should come closer so I don't miss anything you say."

His expression shifts, eyes widening ever so slightly. They've already crossed the boundary of good sense and propriety, but what she's suggesting seems like a level neither of them are truly ready for all the same. It's not the potential for any sir of sexual mishaps that have him on edge, that's a factor of course, but one which he feels confident enough can be avoided. Rather, it's the intimacy itself that strikes him. There is, after all, a difference between napping haphazardly together in a common space and sleeping together in a bed. Regardless of the pretense.

Still, she has a point, and the pillows look softer an more accommodating than the armchair. And it was her invitation and not his perceived or implied imposition.

Resolutely, he gathers up the book, still willing, or in fact needing, to maintain at least some of the appearance. Less than comfortably, he settles next to her, all too aware of the heat of her legs next to his, and the firmness of her shoulder as they brush against each other. Thank God for the blanket between them.

"I suppose," he begins, once his heart isn't racing. "That I do not know any other standards which I can set. The trouble with subjectivism is that ultimately too much becomes dependent on the individual. I may define happiness as freedom for all men, or a grand romance, or something equally lofty, and you may define it as a particularly good bowl of strawberry ice cream, and under a subjectivist perspective, those things are both correct. And I find that as frustrating as it is appealing."

She doesn't press any further, just letting her face sink into the pillow a bit and feeling his weight on the bed shift her. She wants to teach for his hand but, god willing, there will be time for that in the future. Time for her to cup his cheek in her hand and tap noses without feeling as if they are crossing some boundary neither of them have seem for to draw out loud.

She closes her eyes, and realizes that she absolutely trusts him. There's no thought that he might hurt her or take advantage of her vulnerable, sleepy state, and it's not a sense if peace she's assigned to most men. Most men have, after all, seen her body first and her soul second, her mind never.

"But that's arguing against being subjective, not arguing for being absolute. You haven't told me why you think absolutism is a better idea."

She sighs, not out of sadness but simply to let all her energy roll out if her like the tide.

"I like having a standard. I like having something to which I can point and say this is good, and this is not." She might be perfectly willing to relax, but he is not. They're at eye level now, or they would be if her eyes were open, and Enjolras watches her keenly. Every shockingly even breath she takes is quietly noted, every pull at her brow considered and investigated for its potential deeper meaning. She is like an obscure code he needs to break, something wonderfully complicated and purposefully incomprehensible. The closer he gets, the most he understands and the more questions open up to him again.

"That isn't an argument, and you should have been a lawyer. I think you would have been very good at it."

They lay there for a time, enough time at least for his breathing to even out again. His heart has calmed down too, the danger of it jumping out of his chest and up into his throat seems gone for now. Boldly, perhaps missing the adrenaline, he reaches for the her hand that's clutching the blankets by her shoulder. It immediately sets off a new tightness in hist chest and a blush that burns out slowly, spreading from his cheeks to behind his ears.

"I-- that is to say," he falters, voice less certain than it had been even a moment ago. Philosophy and politics are so much more his element. "Would you mind terribly if I were to kiss you again?"

"A lawyer? Really?" She smiles, edges of her lips turning upwards in a mirror of the curve of her lashes. She feels his hand find hers and it surprises her, sends a little electrical static shock through her chest, and she opens her eyes in surprise - but not unpleasantly so. "Maybe you just like a simpler world than I do, Mr. Standards. Monsieur Standards."

His hand fits in hers so perfectly. If she didn't know better she'd think it was some divine intention, that he is the convexes to her concaves, but she doesn't believe in that sort of stuff - and besides, their kisses are proof positive that they weren't designed in each other's images. Pleasurable as they are, they're awkward, clumsy.

Which means they should practice, she thinks, and as much as she tries to project confidence she feels as uncertain as he does, as if there's a soft layer of cotton between her flesh and her skin full of softness and of brambles. It's as if this moment and everything inside it is made of the most fragile glass, exquisite and yet so, so fragile that she's afraid to even breathe too loudly.

"I wouldn't mind at all."

At her permission, he leans forward, propping himself up on one arm. In this position, with their hands laced together as they are, he's leaning half-way on top of her. It's inappropriate, he realizes, before abruptly concluding that he doesn't care. Still it isn't a position in which he ever really thought he would find himself and particularly not so enthusiastically.

"Monsieur Niveau sounds almost as if it should be a name." He says before dropping his lips onto hers ever so softly. Their kisses still lack anything more amorous, they're all softness and gentle pressure, nothing threatening to either of their boundaries, nothing can be misinterpreted as too pushing. Any forwardness is due to their positioning together, practically entwined on his bed. He wishes he could forget about that, at least for the moment.

"I like your name the way it is. Now that I finally know how to pronounce it."

She kisses back, and everything is chaste and tender, hungry but restrained. It's nothing like the facesucking that she's faked for TV, there's nothing terribly wet or semi-painful or twisting or arousing about it. It's safe, it's gentle, it's honest. It's sweet, and Venus wishes there was a word for that that didn't sound condescending or diminutive, because she thinks it's both that sweet and also everything she wants at the moment. She is without complaint, even from the strange angle of her shoulder into the bed right now, the sting on her lips of Azula's wounding.

They'll go no further today, but she's alright with that. She'll fall asleep in personal splendor, knowing that happiness can be an aspiration and can be the tint of a moment, this moment.

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I Want Your Flowers Like Babies Want God's Love [Closed]

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